Chapelle Notre-Dame de Bon-Voyage

Chapelle Notre-Dame de Bon-Voyage stands in Nice, on the old path that ran along the Paillon. The chapel reached its present form in 1727. Local custom set such chapels at the town's edge, marking where travellers saw the main church first or last. Here that view took in the church of Sainte Réparate. It is baroque in the manner of the County of Nice.

An old salt route passed this way, later widened into the strada reale, the royal road to Turin. Eighteenth-century traffic was heavy: more than thirty thousand mules trooped past each year. The road climbed the Paillon valley, crossed the passes and reached the Piedmont, a journey that not everyone survived. Turin was then the capital of the States of Savoy, a territory that included Nice. Before setting out, travellers stopped here to pray for the Virgin's protection one last time. The consuls of Nice even escorted the princes of Savoy to this chapel before their journey home.

Restoration has returned the chapel to its early eighteenth-century appearance. Beneath it, restorers found the remains of a seventeenth-century predecessor, especially around the windows. Its terracotta floor matches the tiles discovered beneath the 1930s paving. Antoine Grisi, an architect specialising in historic monuments, oversaw the work. Inside you find lime-finished walls and an altar brought back to its baroque lines. A Tende carpenter made the double oak door. A local blacksmith gave the iron cross and the Virgin statue on the facade. A bronze bell with six handles, the Virgin on one face and the city's arms on the other, rings on the hour. Along one side run the remains of the Canal des Moulins, an agricultural channel named in early nineteenth-century land records. Beside them stands a boundary stone recalling where Èze ended and Nice began.